(big snip)
> Well, I'm still unconvinced that point-focus can't work just fine,
> even for applications with lots of windows. Take Grail
> <http://monty.cnri.reston.va.us/grail/>, a free web browser we've
> written that's implemented in Python/Tk. In the next release, you'll
> be able to drive the thing almost entirely from the keyboard,
Gee, and to think you could do this with Windows and OS/2 applications
5 years ago...
> and even
> as separate top level windows pop up and down (e.g. to interact with
> the Bookmarks, History, or File dialogs), focus is managed correctly
> to the subwindows without ever having to move the mouse (as long as
> its one of the application's top level windows), even with
> pointer-focus.
How, by warping the mouse?
> Okay, I'm not an Xpert so maybe there's some inherent
> design flaw in X I'm not aware of. I've just never seen it as a real,
> unsurmountable problem with all the apps I've used over the years.
> Even XEmacs (although it has some bugs) handles focus management in
> subordinate top-level windows that do not contain the pointer.
XEmacs is a pretty poor example of good UI design IMHO. It's very
efficient to work with (we use it here), but if you tried to sell it
to a Mac or Windows user they'd laugh you right out of town.
> SR> It's also confusing because pointer focus really only has
> SR> advantages when you're dealing primarily with xterm-type
> SR> windows (as I invariably discover is the standard tool of
> SR> pointer focus afficianados). When your rarely or never use
> SR> them, pointer focus is just a pain in the ass because you're
> SR> constantly having to move the mouse before you can type in
> SR> dialogs and such.
>
> Nope, its just that not all applications manage active focus
> correctly. Its one of the main reasons why I can't stand Netscape on
> X. I hit Meta-O and the dialog that pops up doesn't get focus.
I see, let's take the only decent UI that the vast majority of X users
have ever used and ruin it because it doesn't work well with the
environment that works well with xterm windows. Your argument goes
*exactly* to my point: users new to computers are much more likely to
use Netscape than they are to use xterms. Fvwm should come with the
defaults set to take this into consideration.
> It
> was nearly trivial for me to add this to Grail, *and* to move focus
> back to the original window when finished interacting with the dialog.
How?
> >> Which only goes to show that the problem is MetaCard not
> >> supporting fvwm, and not fvwm's lack of support for MetaCard.
>
> SR> This is really putting the cart before the horse: you buy a
> SR> computer to run applications, not a window manager. If your
> SR> applications work with other window managers but not fvwm,
> SR> it's fvwm that's broken, not the applications.
>
> Sorry, but this is backwards, unless I bought my computer to only run
> MetaCard. My applications should honor my environmental preferences.
> They should not dictate to me what's for my own good especially for
> such fundamentally religious issues as focus policy.
So you're saying that application vendors have no right to expect any
sort of standardization of desktop environments? Hope you like hand
building all your applications...
> -Barry
>
--
***************************************************************
Scott Raney raney_at_metacard.com http://www.metacard.com
Tcl and ksh: syntactic gymnastics
MetaCard: it does what you think
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Received on Wed Oct 23 1996 - 16:11:54 BST